Misery loves company in Illinois. Danville, Kankakee and Decatur also still have a 10 percent-plus jobless rate.

But one thing to remember as we head into 2014 is that we are less miserable than January 2010 when our economy was bottoming out while much of the rest of the country was starting to recover from the Great Recession.

In January 2010:

n The Boone-Winnebago county jobless rate soared to 19.1 percent. That was the highest level it had been since it was 20 percent in January 1983.

n The estimated number of people receiving unemployment benefits reached 33,077. That is the about the combined population of Machesney Park and Rockton.

n Bankruptcy filings jumped to 197 and there were 216 foreclosure cases filed that month.

In October 2013, which is the most recent month with all of that data available:

n The jobless rate is down to 10.5 percent and the number of people estimated to be receiving unemployment benefits fell to 16,983.

n There were 151 bankruptcies and 175 foreclosure cases filed in October.

Still, retired Northern Illinois University economist John Lewis was concerned because the hiring dropped off suddenly in the second half of 2013.

"From an employment perspective, our economy has pretty much stalled," Lewis said. "The jobless rate has been falling not so much because of hiring but because of people dropping out of the labor force," Lewis said.

In January 2010, the state estimated that there were 140,685 people working in Boone and Winnebago counties. That was a loss of about 28,500 jobs from the record employment of 169,154 in July 2007.

In October 2012, local employment finally inched back over 150,000, hitting 150,290. But this October our total employed estimate had slipped back to 144,468.

"Some people have moved. I suspect many more have quit looking for work. Are there others in training programs?" Lewis asked. "We're five years out of the recession and things haven't gotten much better."